Needful Things (18 page)

Mr. Gaunt looked at the picture of Elvis and a momentary moue of distaste crossed his face. “I don't think I'd want to know,” he said. “It looked extremely . . . sweaty.”

“But if it was more than seventy dollars, I'd have to write a check. Chuck would know. He'd want to know what I spent it for. And if I told him, he'd . . . he'd . . .”

“That,” Mr. Gaunt said, “is not my problem. I am a shopkeeper, not a marriage counsellor.” He was looking down at her, speaking to the top of her sweaty head. “I'm sure that someone else—Mrs. Rusk, for instance—will be able to afford this rather unique likeness of the late Mr. Presley.”

At the mention of Cora, Myra's head snapped up. Her eyes were sunken, glittering points in deep brown sockets. Her teeth were revealed in a snarl. She looked, in that instant, quite insane.

“You'd sell it to
her?”
she hissed.

“I believe in free trade,” Mr. Gaunt said. “It's what made this country great. I really wish you'd let go of me, Myra. Your hands are positively
running
with sweat. I'm going to have these pants dry-cleaned, and even then I'm not sure—”

“Eighty! Eighty dollars!”

“I'll sell it to you for exactly twice that,” Mr. Gaunt said. “One hundred and sixty dollars.” He grinned, revealing his large, crooked teeth. “And Myra—your personal check is good with me.”

She uttered a howl of despair. “I can't! Chuck will
kill
me!”

“Maybe,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but you would be dying for a hunka-hunka burning love, would you not?”

“A hundred,” Myra whined, grabbing his calves again as he tried to step away from her. “Please, a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred and forty,” Gaunt countered. “It's as low as I can go. It is my final offer.”

“All right,” Myra panted. “All right, that's all right, I'll pay it-—”

“And you'll have to throw in a blowjob, of course,” Gaunt said, grinning down at her.

She looked up at him, her mouth a perfect O. “What did you say?” she whispered.

“Blow
me!” he shouted down at her. “Fel
late
me! Open that gorgeous metal-filled mouth of yours and
gobble my crank!”

“Oh my God,” Myra moaned.

“As you wish,” Mr. Gaunt said, beginning to turn away.

She grabbed him before he could leave her. A moment later her shaking hands were scrabbling at his fly.

He let her scrabble for a few moments, his face amused, and then he slapped her hands away. “Forget it,” he said. “Oral sex gives me amnesia.”

“What—”

“Never
mind,
Myra.” He tossed her the picture. She flailed her hands at it, caught it somehow, and clutched it to her bosom. “There
is
one other thing, however.”

“What?” she hissed at him.

“Do you know the man who tends the bar on the other side of the Tin Bridge?”

She was beginning to shake her head, her eyes filling with alarm again, then realized who he must mean, “Henry Beaufort?”

“Yes. I believe he also owns the establishment which is called The Mellow Tiger. A rather interesting name.”

“Well, I don't
know
him, but I know who he
is,
I guess.” She had never been in The Mellow Tiger in her life, but she knew as well as anyone who owned and ran the place.

“Yes. Him. I want you to play a little trick on Mr. Beaufort.”

“What . . . what kind of a trick?”

Gaunt reached down, grasped one of Myra's sweat-slimy hands, and helped her to her feet.

“That,” he said, “is something we can talk about while you write your check, Myra.” He smiled then, and all his charm flooded back into his face. His brown eyes sparkled and danced. “And by the way, would you like your picture gift-wrapped?”

Alan slid into a booth in Nan's Luncheonette across from Polly and saw at once that the pain was still bad—bad enough for her to have taken a Percodan in the afternoon, which was rare. He knew it even before she opened her mouth—it was something in the eyes. A sort of shine. He had come to know it . . . but not to like it. He didn't think he would ever like it. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was addicted to the stuff yet. In Polly's case, he supposed that addiction was just another side-effect, something to be expected, noted, and then sublimated to the main problem—which was, simply put, the fact that she was living with pain he probably couldn't even comprehend.

His voice showed none of this as he asked, “How's it going, pretty lady?”

She smiled. “Well, it's been an interesting day.
Verrrrry . . . inderesting,
as that guy used to say on
Laugh-In.”

“You're not old enough to remember that.”

“I am so. Alan, who's that?”

He turned in the direction of her gaze just in time to spot a woman with a rectangular package cradled in her arms drift past Nan's wide plate-glass window. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, and a man coming the other way had to jig rapidly out of her way to avoid a collision. Alan flicked rapidly through the huge file of names and faces he kept in his head and came up with what Norris,
who was deeply in love with police language, would undoubtedly have called “a partial.”

“Evans. Mabel or Mavis or something like that. Her husband's Chuck Evans.”

“She looks like she just smoked some very good Panamanian Red,” Polly said. “I envy her.”

Nan Roberts herself came over to wait on them. She was one of William Rose's Baptist Christian Soldiers, and today she wore a small yellow button above her left breast. It was the third one Alan had seen this afternoon, and he guessed he would see a great many more in the weeks ahead. It showed a slot machine inside a black circle with a red diagonal line drawn through it. There were no words on the button; it made the wearer's feelings about Casino Nite perfectly clear without them.

Nan was a middle-aged woman with a huge bosom and a sweetly pretty face that made you think of Mom and apple pie. The apple pie at Nan's was, as Alan and all his deputies knew, very good, too—especially with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on top. It was easy to take Nan at face value, but a good many business people—realtors, for the most part—had discovered that doing so was a bad idea. Behind the sweet face there was a clicking computer of a mind, and beneath the motherly swell of bosom there was a pile of account books where the heart should have been. Nan owned a very large chunk of Castle Rock, including at least five of the business buildings on Main Street, and now that Pop Merrill was in the ground, Alan suspected she was probably the wealthiest person in town.

She reminded him of a whorehouse madam he had once arrested in Utica. The woman had offered him a bribe, and when he turned that down, she had tried very earnestly to knock his brains out with a birdcage. The tenant, a scrofulous parrot who sometimes said “I fucked your mamma, Frank” in a morose and thoughtful voice, had still been in the cage at the time. Sometimes, when Alan saw the vertical frown-line between Nan Roberts's eyes deepen down, he felt she would be perfectly capable of doing the same thing. And he found it perfectly natural that Nan, who did little these days but sit at the cash
register, would come over to serve the County Sheriff herself. It was the personal touch that means so much.

“Hullo, Alan,” she said, “I haven't seen you in a dog's age! Where you been?”

“Here and there,” he said. “I get around, Nan.”

“Well, don't forget your old friends while you're doing it,” she said, giving him her shining, motherly smile. You had to spend quite awhile around Nan, Alan reflected, before you started to notice how rarely that smile made it all the way to her eyes. “Come see us once in a while.”

“And, lo! Here I be!” Alan said.

Nan pealed laughter so loud and lusty that the men at the counter—loggers, for the most part—craned briefly around. And later, Alan thought, they'll tell their friends that they saw Nan Roberts and the Sheriff yukking it up together. Best of friends.

“Coffee, Alan?”

“Please.”

“How about some pie to go with that? Home-made—apples from McSherry's Orchard over in Sweden. Picked yesterday.” At least she didn't try to tell us she picked them herself, Alan thought.

“No, thanks.”

“Sure? What about you, Polly?” Polly shook her head.

Nan went to get the coffee. “You don't like her much, do you?” Polly asked him in a low voice.

He considered this, a little surprised—likes and dislikes had not really entered his thoughts. “Nan? She's all right. It's just that I like to know who people really are, if I can.”

“And what they really want?”

“That's too damn hard,” he said, laughing. “I'll settle for knowing what they're up to.”

She smiled—he loved to make her smile—and said, “We'll turn you into a Yankee philosopher yet, Alan Pangborn.”

He touched the back of her gloved hand and smiled back.

Nan returned with a cup of black coffee in a thick white mug and left at once. One thing you can say for her, Alan thought, she knows when the amenities have been
performed and the flesh has been pressed to a sufficiency. It wasn't something everyone with Nan's interests and ambitions
did
know.

“Now,” Alan said, sipping his coffee. “Spill the tale of your very interesting day.”

She told him in greater detail about how she and Rosalie Drake had seen Nettie Cobb that morning, how Nettie had agonized in front of Needful Things, and how she had finally summoned up enough courage to go in.

“That's wonderful,” he said, and meant it.

“Yes—but that's not all. When she came out, she'd
bought
something! I've never seen her so cheerful and so . . . so buoyant as she was today. That's it,
buoyant.
You know how sallow she usually is?”

Alan nodded.

“Well, she had roses in her cheeks and her hair was sort of mussed and she actually laughed a few times.”

“Are you sure business was all they were doing?” he asked, and rolled his eyes.

“Don't be silly.” She spoke as if she hadn't suggested the same thing to Rosalie herself. “Anyway, she waited outside until you'd left—I knew she would—and then she came in and showed us what she bought. You know that little collection of carnival glass she has?”

“Nope. There are a few things in this town which have escaped my notice. Believe it or not.”

“She has half a dozen pieces. Most of them came to her from her mother. She told me once that there used to be more, but some of them got broken. Anyway, she loves the few things she has, and he sold her the most gorgeous carnival glass lampshade I've seen in years. At first glance I thought it was Tiffany. Of course it isn't—couldn't be, Nettie could never afford a piece of real Tiffany glass—but it's awfully good.”

“How much
did
she pay?”

“I didn't ask her. But I'll bet whatever sock she keeps her mad-money in is flat this afternoon.”

He frowned a little. “Are you sure she didn't get hornswoggled?”

“Oh, Alan—do you have to be so suspicious all the time? Nettie may be vague about some things, but she
knows her carnival glass. She said it was a bargain, and that means it probably was. It's made her
so
happy.”

“Well, that's great. Just The Ticket.”

“Pardon?”

“That was the name of a shop in Utica,” he said. “A long time ago. I was only a kid. Just The Ticket.”

“And did it have
your
Ticket?” she teased.

“I don't know. I never went in.”

“Well,” she said, “apparently our Mr. Gaunt thinks he might have mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nettie got my cake-box, and there was a note inside it. From Mr. Gaunt.” She pushed her handbag across the table to him. “Take a look—I don't feel up to the clasp this afternoon.”

He ignored the handbag for the moment. “How bad is it, Polly?”

“Bad,” she said simply. “It's been worse, but I'm not going to lie to you; it's never been
much
worse. All this week, since the weather changed.”

“Are you going to see Dr. Van Allen?”

She sighed. “Not yet. I'm due for a respite. Every time it gets bad like this, it lets up just when I feel like I'm going to go crazy any minute. At least, it always has. I suppose that one of these times the respite just won't come. If it's not better by Monday, I'll go see him. But all he can do is write prescriptions. I don't want to be a junkie if I can help it, Alan.”

“But—”

“Enough,” she said softly. “Enough for now, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, a little unwillingly.

“Look at the note. It's very sweet . . . and sort of cute.”

He undid the clasp of her handbag and saw a slim envelope lying on top of her billfold. He took it out. The paper had a rich, creamy feel. Written across the front, in a hand so perfectly old-fashioned it looked like something from an antique diary, was
Ms. Polly Chalmers.

“That style is called copperplate,” she said, amused. “I think they stopped teaching it not long after the Age of the Dinosaurs.”

He took a single sheet of deckle-edged stationery from the envelope. Printed across the top was

NEEDFUL THINGS

Castle Rock, Maine

Leland Gaunt, Proprietor

The handwriting here was not as formally fancy as that on the envelope, but both it and the language itself still had a pleasingly old-fashioned quality.